


Mostly Honest

by TheKnightsWhoSayBook



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, MEGAN GIVE US THE FORBIDDEN SISTER CONTENT, Spoilers for Return of the Thief, love to write about Queen's Thief a series in which characters have names, relationship tag: unnamed canon character & unnamed canon character, relationship tag: unnamed canon character / made up character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28600137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheKnightsWhoSayBook/pseuds/TheKnightsWhoSayBook
Summary: "As Sophos pulled ahead, I said loudly, 'My sisters are even married, and honest housewives to boot.' At least they were mostly honest."—The Thief, chapter 5Megan give us the forbidden sister content challenge
Relationships: Eugenides & Eugenides' Sisters (Queen's Thief)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	Mostly Honest

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to @Blyth3 and @gennis124 for the name suggestions for Gen's secret sisters! NO thanks for MWT for not telling us their names or anything besides that they are "mostly honest" housewives, Megan tell us what that means!!

Euphemia used to be envious of her younger brother's name. Eugenides. She was so close—Euphemia, Eugenia. Just the matter of a few stray letters. When she voiced her discontent once as a child, her father told her sternly that she betrayed her own name twice over by whining. Euphemia, after all, meant "well spoken."

Euphemia didn't want to be well spoken. She wanted to be well born. She wanted the name that belonged to the Thieves of Eddis.

It was a selfish, semi-secret wish of her childhood to be like her grandfather. Once she had wanted to be like her mother, the Queen Thief, but once she'd grown old enough to realize there was a chasm of different between being Queen Thief and Queen's Thief, that stopped being enough. She wanted to know what her grandfather knew, to do what he did, to see what he saw when he left Eddis.

Her attempts to ingratiate herself to her grandfather went nowhere. The old Eugenides did not dote on his grandchildren. He was distant to children in general, and had no pressing interest in his daughter's until the young Eugenides was born. When the boy was placed in his arms, Euphemia, quietly crowding the doorway with her siblings as they tried to see past the grownups to their new brother, saw the old man's expression change. It wasn't necessarily kinder, it was just that... for the first time, he had any kind of opinion at all about his grandchild. "He will be the next Thief."

Even as her father disagreed, ice in his voice, Euphemia was jealous. This baby? She was right here, and she loved her grandfather. She was six years old and ready to begin training right now.

"Enough," her mother said from the bed. "Get out. Argue elsewhere. Give me Genny so the children can meet him."

Finally invited in, her brothers and sister rushed forward to get a look at Eugenides, while their father and grandfather passed them walking stiffly from the room, argument crackling in the air between them. Euphemia paused just inside the doorway. She could say something—say she would be the next Thief instead—

The elder Eugenides walked past her without even glancing down. The words died in her throat.

"Euphemia, come see your brother."

Reluctantly, she joined her siblings at her mother's side. "Why's he going to be the Thief?" He didn't look like anything special. He looked just like her last brother to be born, as far as she remembered, and Temenus wasn't special.

She reached around Xenia to rub Euphemia's back. "Don't worry about it, sweetheart, they just like to argue."

That wasn't what she asked and she wasn't worried about the two men fighting but she didn't try to explain, mostly because she suspected she was too old to be jealous of a baby. She discretely poked him instead. He cried like any other baby.

* * *

When she was eight and Eugenides was a nuisance of a toddler, Euphemia developed a habit of swiping her sister's hair pins any time Xenia irritated her. When her sister finally caught her and the resulting temper tantrum brought Euphemia before her parents for chastisement, she argued, "It's what grandfather would do."

Her mother merely said, "Your grandfather would have dedicated them," while her father growled, "Your grandfather is not an example to be followed."

"What about mama?"

His expression warmed a little, and he looked at his wife with laughter in his eyes. "Do not follow her example either."

"I've been on perfect behavior," her mother said in a saintly voice.

"That is not your fibula pin," he said.

"Well, it isn't the baroness's either anymore."

Euphemia took this as validation that Xenia's hairpins were hers now and scampered from the room.

* * *

While Eugenides began training with their grandfather, Euphemia was a young teenager with a secret: she had stolen a tiny statuette of a goddess from the rooms of the dry old minister who sometimes took over tutoring the royal children and their cousins. While the minister had been focused on thoroughly criticizing Helen's posture, Euphemia, pretending to look at his bookshelves, had palmed the figure from a side table and dropped it into her roomy pocket.

After a few days of not noticing it was missing, the minister blamed her mother. Her mother assumed he had lost it and was blaming her unjustly, and her indifference to the crime infuriated him. Euphemia watched him make a fool of himself with glee.

"What should I do with it?" she asked Xenia. The two of them were mortal enemies at least three days a week, but today they were best friends giggling together in their bedroom.

Xenia danced around the room, hyper with mischief, which she rarely engaged in on her own. Being the well-behaved sister meant deviousness got stored up inside her, which was why Euphemia went to her when she needed ideas. "Give it back to him," she said, and before Euphemia could protest, she said, "No, listen to me—"

The next day, the minister discovered that his statuette had reappeared, exactly where it was supposed to be. But the unadorned stone had been painted all over, with brown skin and black hair and bright red robes and a mischievous smile. The minister crowed indignantly. No matter how it was scrubbed, traces of paint would forever remain in the fine lines. He maintained for the rest of his life that the Queen Thief had painted it to look like herself, though no one had ever known her to return things she stole.

* * *

When Euphemia was sixteen, her mother slipped coming in from the roof and died. Her tricks weren't blamed on her mother any more.

* * *

She and Xenia were loitering around the practice yards, shouting encouragement to Helen and mostly discouragement to everyone else, when Cleon shoved just in front of her to more effectively shout instructions and abuse at a brother whose performance apparently irritated him. Cleon's behavior in turn irritated Euphemia, who saw low-hanging fruit—a gold chain around his neck with a large, simple clasp.

With nimble fingers and without really thinking, she flicked the clasp open. The chain slithered off his neck and fell to the ground. The slight disturbance made him turn around in confusion, maybe thinking she'd tapped him. Without looking down, she immediately kicked the necklace safely under Xenia's skirt, and met Cleon's eyes with a friendly smile. "Sorry, I can't see around you."

"Oh." He moved away, shouting resumed.

Xenia elbowed her, hard. "Stop using my skirts for crime."

Euphemia mimicked her, childlike, and Xenia made as though to walk away.

"Wait, no!"

Xenia smiled smugly, but stayed still as Euphemia knelt as though to tighten her laces and snatched the necklace from beneath Xenia's hem.

She straightened up, necklace safely tucked in her pocket, and checked that no one was looking at her. All she saw was Gen slipping away from the boys his age who were being drilled with light wooden swords. He squeezed himself between Euphemia and Xenia without so much as an excuse me and crouched so Xenia's skirt would hide him.

Euphemia snorted. "Menace," Xenia said indifferently.

* * *

At some point after Euphemia had met Otis—she was coming back from a walk with him, a long walk which only ended because it began to rain on them, and she couldn't get a smile off her face as they parted ways—and she returned to her bedroom to find Xenia blocking the door, arms crossed tightly and face taut. Euphemia's steps slowed, unsure if Xenia was angry at her. She had "borrowed" a few of her sister's things recently.

"Do you know what grandfather did?"

Euphemia relaxed. She wasn't the target. "No one knows what grandfather does, except Gen." There wasn't any bitterness in her voice, she told herself. It was just annoyance that Xenia hadn't moved to let her in.

"This is about Gen, something's happened to him."

"When is something not happening to Gen?"

"This isn't something he brought on himself."

"How unusual," Euphemia said flippantly. "May I enter my bedroom?"

Xenia relented and let Euphemia enter. She began to strip off her wet clothes as Xenia shut the door and said, "You remember the bad beating?"

Oh. Xenia probably wasn't angry, she just sounded angry because she was worried. It was something the sisters had in common. "I noticed the broken arm, yes."

"Be serious," Xenia snapped. "This isn't the time for your jealousy."

Euphemia dropped her outer dress, appalled. _"Jealousy?"_

"Yes, your immature jealousy that _you_ don't get to be harangued by grandfather and beaten up by our cousins and Gen does. That jealousy."

"I'm not _jealous_ of a—" She faltered in her fury, trying to remember how old Gen was. "Twelve year old?"

She couldn't tell if Xenia's withering stare was because she'd had to stop and think or if she'd gotten it wrong. "Let's get this out of the way. You want to be the Thief. You always have."

Euphemia pulled herself up to her full height. "Well—maybe. So what? Aren't I allowed to want things? Doesn't everyone want things they can't have?"

"This isn't something you should want! No one's seen Gen since he returned without Lader yesterday. Do you know what he did? What he had to do because of what he is?"

She could guess, but she didn't want to. Gen was a child. She pulled on a clean, dry dress, stalling for time. When she'd poked her head out she said, "I don't know why you're angry at me."

"Because," Xenia half-shouted, "I want to tell my sister I'm worried about our brother and have her understand and hold me and be worried too, not make snarky comments and brush it off! I want—" She was going to start crying. It was in the warble in her voice. Euphemia would absolutely not be able to keep herself together if that happened—no matter how she felt, Xenia crying set her off.

She stretched her arms out, pleading. "Xen. It's okay."

"No, I don't think it is." She let Euphemia hug her anyway.

She was glad Xenia wasn't bawling, but her words still stung.

* * *

One day a few years later, Gen joined her at the altar to Eugenides. She had been sitting on the floor, looking at Cleon's necklace and the other offerings, and thinking about her mother, and the difference between Queen Thief and Queen's Thief.

"You know people blame me for things you stole?" Gen said conversationally. There had been no greeting, he often didn't bother with them.

"How odd, blaming a thief for stolen items." She didn't look away from the altar, but heard him lay down on the narrow stone bench behind her.

When he was comfortable, he said, "I keep trying to figure out if grandfather knows you're a thief too, but he's hard to read."

Her heart jumped. For a moment, she'd thought he'd meant Thief with a capital T. Embarrassment made her temper rise. "I'll save you the trouble. He's never noticed any grandchild but you exists."

"I didn't come here to fight," he said, wounded.

"Then why are you here?"

"I thought I'd be alone."

Gen liked his time alone, she thought. She didn't particularly. She liked to talk, and share her exploits with people. She liked annoying Xenia or confiding in her as the situation called for, and reading to their brother Stenides as he worked, and Otis's pleasant way of listening. Gen was rarely part of these things.

As if reading her thoughts, he said, "Are you here to be alone? _You_ don't have to be."

"You don't have to be either."

"Well, it's damned harder for me not to be."

She reached back and slapped his arm lightly, because it was what Xenia would do if she heard him curse. It startled a laugh out of him. "You better love being the Thief," she said, "Because sometimes you act like you don't and it makes me want to smack you."

"What stops you? Everyone else just does it."

That made her feel guilty, but she said, "When they can catch you."

"When they can catch me," he agreed. "Why do you care? I know why I want to be the Thief, but why would anyone else?"

She fisted her hands in her skirt, angry with him because she knew the answer to the question but didn't know how to say it.

They sat in silence for a while before she said, "Have there ever been any female thieves, Gen?"

He started, more from confusion than surprise she thought. "I don't know. Besides mother, I mean, I guess not."

"Mother was not the Thief."

"Eddis didn't need one when she... when she was here."

"And we will while you're alive?"

His voice was quiet. "Do you doubt it? Sounis is at our doorstep. He wants to marry Helen."

"But is there a reason the Thief couldn't be a woman?"

"Not that I know of."

She nodded, let the unanswered question lie: Then why hasn't it ever been?

He dared to add, "But there's a reason it couldn't be you." He swung himself upright. "You'd hate it."

"I know," she said. "That's what I've been sitting here thinking."

"And?"

"It doesn't matter. I want it anyway."

"Is it the curse of thieves to always want what we can't have?"

She wondered what it was he wanted and couldn't have. She'd thought he could steal anything.

* * *

Their grandfather died before she married Otis, and Gen disappeared after. Her father did not confirm in so many words that he had sent his son to Sounis, but the siblings all had their suspicions. When Xenia got so worried she looked angry, Euphemia held her and told her she worried too—though she wasn't sure that was true—and scolded her to focus on herself and the child she was having soon.

"Gen will use up all your worries if you let him," she told Xenia, "and then you'll have none left for your children when they do foolish things. They will go gallivanting off on stupid plans and you will go, 'Ah well, that's fine, have fun darlings.'"

"I will not," Xenia said, forgetting to be worried about Gen as she swatted Euphemia with a decorative pillow. "Otis, tell her to stop saying such silly things."

"It's a better channel for her energies than painting other people's property," Otis said cheerfully.

"Oh Euphemia, you didn't tell him about that!"

"I did," she said, unrepentant. "I like to brag, I can't help it."

* * *

Later, she'd see her brother crowned king and remember their conversation at the altar and think, how foolish to say one can't do something one hates. You're going to do it for the rest of your life.

Much later, she'd hear that her niece had been named Eugenia and she would laugh.


End file.
